The Stars’ Tennis Balls (22 page)

‘Dr Mallo is worried that you are upset about Babe,’

Paul explained. ‘They are not strong. Just to help you sleep.’

‘Okay then,’ said Ned cheerfully, slapping them to his mouth and swallowing. ‘Very thoughtful of the good doctor.’

‘And here is some chewing gum for you.

Ned took the stick of gum and beamed. ‘Hollywood, how glamorous! Paul, you’re a hero.’

‘Good night, Thomas. Have a good sleep.’

‘Oh tell me though,’ said Ned, stopping Paul from closing the door again. ‘How did Trondheim do?’

Ned held the spoon in his right hand, which he held casually against the side of the door. He leaned harder and harder, with only a gap of an inch through which he could talk to Paul, the handle of the spoon pressing against the sprung lock.

‘Three goals to one? A great victory for you,’ he said. ‘Well, I’ll see you in the morning perhaps. Goodnight.’

With one last push, Ned closed the door. The spoon handle projected into the room from the gap between the door and the jamb. As Paul’s footsteps died away down the corridor, Ned pulled at the door, which gave. The spoon was holding back the lock spring. Almost sobbing with relief, Ned returned to his desk, spat out the sleeping pills and for the last time unfolded Babe’s circuit diagram.

At what he judged to be a time somewhere between half past two and three in the morning, he went to his door and pulled it open. The spoon dropped to the floor with a metallic clatter and, cursing himself as the sound rang around the corridor, Ned stooped to pick it up.

No sound came from any part of the building as he walked past the empty sun-room, chewing on his Hollywood gum. Only the clicking of the bones in his bare feet and toes disturbed the huge vacuum of silence that hung over the building like a shroud.

When he reached the door to Mallo’s office, he listened for a minute before entering. Once inside, he switched on the desk light and looked around, blinking at the sudden glare. The curtains were drawn, but there would be a line of light showing under the door. He knew there was very little time to lose. He went straight to a wooden box on the wall, opened it and took out a key. An impulse made him take out another, smaller key and try it in the lock of the small grey filing cabinet against the opposite wall. The key fitted and Ned searched quickly about the rest of the office until he found a plastic shopping bag into which he pushed sheaf after sheaf of papers and files. Tying the top of the carrier bag in a tight knot, he took out the chewing gum, swallowed the small key, popped the gum back in his mouth, switched off the desk light and crept back out into the corridor.

As he approached the staff quarters, rhythmically chewing on his gum, he pressed the carrier-bag under his arm hard against his body to diminish the rustle it made as he walked. He could hear music playing and saw an oblong fall of light in the passageway ahead. The room where Paul would be sitting had a window that looked over the passageway through which Ned had to pass. He crept slowly towards it and had just dropped to his knees ready to crawl along the floor under the line of view when the door opened and Paul walked out. Ned’s heart jumped and his whole body froze. The carrier bag crackled, sounding in Ned’s ears like a truck running over a thousand plastic egg-cartons.

Paul crossed straight over into the room opposite without looking in Ned’s direction. The vigorous splash of a stream of urine tumbling into a lavatory bowl echoed around the corridor and trembling with relief, Ned rose and walked forward. As he passed the door he gave a quick glance to his left and saw Paul standing legs apart, his back to the corridor, shaking off and humming the Ode to Joy. He wore a tee-shirt and jeans and the unprecedented sight of such ordinary clothes awoke feelings of great excitement in Ned. They seemed to assure him that the outside world was real and within reach.

He rounded the corner and leant against the wall. The night was cool, but still he could feel trickles of cold sweat running from his temples onto the back of his neck. He stopped chewing and listened, his mouth open. He heard the sound of a flush, footsteps crossing the corridor and a door closing. Spearmint saliva was dribbling from his open mouth. He sucked it in and started to chew again.

On the wall opposite him he saw the winking green light of the alarm box. Tip-toeing across, he examined it close up, mentally laying Babe’s diagram of the control box over the real thing. The circuit that controlled the hospital corridor was designated as Zone 4. Ned took the key he had taken from Mallo’s office and tried to fit it into the master lock. It slipped out of the lock and for one heart-stopping moment he thought he might have swallowed the wrong key. He tried again and this time it slipped in easily. With a gulp of relief, he gave it a half turn to the right. The winking green light became a winking red light. Holding his breath, he flicked up the fourth in a row of dip-switches that ran the length of the control-box and moved the key another quarter turn to the right. He held it there for a second then switched it twice to the left, returning it to its original location. As the key passed from three o’clock on its way to the home position, the whole unit gave a quick blaring bleep of such intensity that Ned almost yelled in fright. Backing into the doorway opposite he waited, eyes fixed on the lights of the control box. The green light was flashing again, but there was a new red light next to it which winked four times in succession, paused then winked four times again, revealing to anyone who knew the system that Zone 4 had been by-passed. No doors opened or closed in the staff room around the corner and no alteration came in the volume of the music emerging from Paul’s radio. Only in Ned’s ears had the bleep blasted like a cavalry bugle sounding in hell. Approaching the alarm-box once more, Ned gently pulled out the key. The lights flashed as before but all was quiet. He pulled a tiny wad of gum from his mouth and pressed it over the winking red beam, tamping it firmly so that no light leaked out from the sides. He stepped back to look.

It worried him that whoever disabled the alarm in the morning would spot the little plug of chewing-gum. If they noticed it
after
switching off the alarm it might mean nothing, but if they removed the gum while the system was still active, the four flashes of light would tell them everything they needed to know and all hell would break loose. Ned pressed against the lump of gum with the end of the key, working it flat until he felt that it was flush with the surface of the control-box. By the small green glow that offered the only light to work by, Ned pressed and sculpted until he believed that the gum had become as good as invisible.

Satisfied finally that everything appeared normal, he put the key in his mouth and moved silently towards the doors that led to the hospital wing.

Babe was dead and he, Ned, had not felt more alive for over twenty years. The blood was singing in his ears, his heart thumped and banged in his chest like a slapping belt-driven engine and every nerve in his body vibrated with power and energy. No matter what happened to him now he knew he could never regret the return of so much intense excitement. If Dr Mallo and all the staff were to leap out from the next doorway, if Rolf were to pin him to the wall and dislocate his shoulders again and all privileges, books and papers were taken away for ever, if he were made to subsist on nothing from now on but a regime of chlorpromazine and electric shocks, still it would have been worth it just to have experienced this short burst of true living.

Dr Mallo and the staff did not leap out from the next doorway. The next doorway led to the room adjacent to the ward where Babe had died and the hospital wing remained as quiet as the tomb it was serving as. Ned put his hand to the doorknob and turned the handle. If he had made a mistake with the alarm-box he would discover it now. He pushed the door open. No bells jangled, no sirens wailed. All was silent. He closed the door behind him and felt for a light-switch.

He had found himself in a store room whose walls were lined with shelves filled with rows of medical supplies. In the centre of the room was a trestle-table on which stood a packing case about seven feet long and three feet wide with thick rope handles attached to the end sides. Ned approached the table and laid his hands on the lid of the packing case.

‘Hello, Babe,’ he whispered. ‘So far so good.’

He laid down the carrier bag and looked about him. The teaspoon was still gripped in his left hand but he had hoped he might find something stronger. He searched the shelves and saw nothing that would help him. He had almost given up when he glimpsed the end side of a metallic blue toolbox under the table itself.

Helping himself to a heavy-handled chisel, Ned set to work on prising the lid free, being careful not to bend any of the nails. It took close to fifteen minutes and Ned was sweating profusely by the time he lifted the lid clear and laid it on the floor.

Inside the crate Babe’s body was covered in a white sheet. Ned swallowed, gripped the fabric and plucked it away. He almost screamed in shock.

Babe was smiling. It was the smile that Ned had come to love over the last ten years. It was the wicked grin of complicity, excitement and pleasure that always preceded a new lesson in a new field.

Wait till you meet Joyce, old lad!

And next week, Faraday and magnets – prepare to be astounded!

The Battle of Lepanto tomorrow, Ned my boy! Wagner. Richard Wagner! Once in your system, never out.

The Marshall attack. Not an opening for the fainthearted.

Let’s say Heil to Herr Schopenhauer, shall we?

Russian verbs of motion, Ned. They’ll drive you mad.

Ned leaned down and stroked Babe’s beard.

‘Here we go,’ he said.

Ned was prepared to find the body heavy and had planned in his mind all evening how he would set about lifting Babe out of the crate. In his mind he had imagined that he would put a hand under each of his arms, summon up all his strength and heave until Babe’s body was draped face down over Ned’s back in a kind of fireman’s lift. What Ned had not foreseen was the enormous strain this would throw on his weak shoulders. As he strained at Babe’s dead weight he could feel the socket of the left shoulder grinding in the old familiar way. He had not put one of them out for at least seven or eight years and while he knew perfectly well how to snap the socket back, tonight he could not allow anything to disable him. He decided to try letting his right shoulder take the weight instead. He drew in nine or ten sharp lungfuls of breath and pulled.

Staggering from the table with Babe over his shoulder, Ned sank down to the floor, sweat pouring from him and his right shoulder on fire with pain. Babe’s head banged against the floor and his body tumbled to the ground with a crack of bone as the neck snapped like a dry twig.

Ned rose unsteadily to his feet and gently stretched out his arms. The right shoulder gave a small click but held in its socket. Inhaling and exhaling deeply, Ned forced his breathing to slow to a calmer rhythm and waited for the trembling in his arms and legs to stop. Stretching and inhaling deeply once more he switched off the lights, opened the door and listened. Satisfied that no sound other than the thumping of his heart pierced the deep black silence of the night, he bent down and hooked a hand under each of Babe’s arms.

He pulled the body slowly along the corridor of the hospital wing and reached the alarm-box. The radio around the corner was playing music. Ned recognised it to be Grieg’s
Death of
Е
se
and instinctively looked down at Babe, as if to share the joke.

He dragged the body around the corner and laid it down face up. Crouching at Babe’s feet, he pushed him forward along the ground and past the door to the staff room. If Paul came out for another pee, he could not help but trip over the corpse and all would be lost. Bent as low as possible without losing his purchase on the soles of Babe’s feet, Ned pushed again. He was now directly below the window and he pushed faster and faster, wishing that the radio had programmed something louder and more percussive. If it was to be funereal, why not Siegfried’s
Death,
Verdi’s
Dies Ire
or the
March to the Scaffold?
The muted strings of Grieg whined on as Ned cleared the window, stood up and resumed the more comfortable grip under Babe’s arms that allowed him to drag the body backwards over the linoleum that led to his own wing.

Back in his room, it took another shoulder-wrenching effort to heave Babe onto the bed. He did so without first pulling back the blankets and had to rock the body backwards and forwards on its side before he could loosen the bed sheets and cover Babe up, cursing himself for his stupidity. He imagined Babe too tutting at such a lack of foresight and common sense.

‘Sorry,’ he whispered.
‘Mea culpa. Mea maxima culpa.’

Ned arranged the head on the pillow, pulled up the blankets and bent down to lay a final kiss on Babe’s head. ‘Goodbye my best and dearest friend. Whatever happens, you have saved my life.’

On his way back to the store room Ned returned to Mallo’s office and replaced the alarm-key, parking the residue of his gum under the doctor’s grand leather chair. One day Dr Mallo would find it and wonder how it got there.

Ducking under the staff-room window, from which Rossini’s overture to the
Barber of Seville
now blasted triumphantly, Ned passed by the alarm-box and made his way back to the store room, closing the door behind him and switching on the light.

He could not afford now to make the slightest mistake and he prepared everything he needed with meticulous care. He dropped the carrier bag into the crate and looked around the room. An idea had come to him as he had been dragging Babe’s body along the corridors and he searched the shelves now until he came upon a box marked ‘Diacetylmorphine EP’. He ripped it open and emptied its contents, dozens and dozens of polythene bags, into the crate, throwing in for good measure a polythene bag filled with syringes. He looked down and saw that there was room for another boxful too. And another. After a moment’s thought he added a waste disposal sack, large enough to contain all the polythene bags and the carrier bag he had taken from Mallo’s office too.